


Bright Lights, Big City

by Jillypups



Series: Tumblr Wedding Prompts [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 21st Birthday, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Shippy ships, Tumblr Prompt, Wedding Prompt, did i mention jon is a firefighter, party on garth, party on wayne, taxicab makeout, what happens in vegas is awesome, wtf is wrong with me, yassss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr Wedding Prompt #8: “we accidentally got married in Vegas oops”</p><p>for my dear Bex, who was EXTREMELY PATIENT with me, waiting for her prompt. ILU BEX</p><p>  <a href="http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/129527619618/bright-lights-big-city">Picset</a></p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://bex-morealli.tumblr.com/post/129615433672/bright-lights-big-city-by-jillypups-and">THE PICSET TO END ALL PICSETS</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bex_xo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bex_xo/gifts).



Sunday, December 2, 10:37am

 

It takes her a few moments to wake up, prying herself from deep dark dreams, black and white flashes of flesh, twist and tangle of limbs like they’re under a strobe light, and she can almost feel it, the raking of her nails down a long, smooth back. Sansa inhales when she opens her eyes, and then she regrets the action immediately when her head thuds and pounds by way of reply. She’s belly down on the mattress, twisted up in sheets so white they hurt her eyes, and when she moves her legs under the covers she realizes she is as naked as the day she was born.

 _Where the hell am I,_ she thinks, lifting her head carefully to look at the pad of paper by the phone. Bellagio Hotel  & Casino is printed on top of the paper. _Okay good, I’m at the casino we checked into,_ she thinks, though it’s definitely not _her_ room, the one she got all dolled up in last night. Margie’s pile of dresses isn’t here, and neither is Sansa’s suitcase, but her top is, there on the floor by her strapless bra and skirt. There is a pale grey silk tie draped over the flat screen television, high gloss black men’s shoes next to the wet bar, and unless she’s mistaken, a pair of cuff links on the coffee table in front of the loveseat. _This is a man’s room,_ she realizes.

And that’s when a hand slides onto the small of her back, up and around as it hooks around her hip and pulls her towards the center of the bed. Her eyes widen and her heart pounds, and for a wild, irrational fleeting moment she wonders if she was kidnapped, but then those flashes of hers come back and she recognizes it not as a dream but as a collection of memories. _Drunken memories,_ she thinks as she rolls onto her back to heed the beck of that strong hand, because now she remembers whose bed she’s in.

 

Saturday, December 1th, 10pm

 

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Sansa says, giving her makeup a last inspection before heading to the door of her hotel room when her brother’s girlfriend knocks. “You said you’d give me 20 more minutes, Margie, I’m not even dressed yet,” she says, yanking open the heavy door.

“I’m not either,” Margaery says as she sweeps past with a huge makeup case and a heap of dresses draped over her forearm, with two pairs of strappy stilettos dangling from her fingers. “But Robb and Jon are downstairs playing craps, and there’s nothing as boring as getting ready by yourself,” she says, flinging the dresses down on the bed and spinning around on her bare feet. “I _love_ your makeup by the way. You’re going to slay tonight, honey,” she says.

Sansa bites her lip and grins. “I gotta admit, I’m pretty proud of myself. I’ve never had much luck with a liquid liner cat eye, but I guess the birthday gods smiled down on me tonight,” she says with another glance in the mirror, leaving out the fact that she had to try it twice before her hands stopped shaking long enough to do both eyes.

She’s only a little nervous, and the butterflies in her stomach are mostly from excitement. She’s never been to Vegas before, isn’t really the wild child this city seems to attract, but when Margaery called her with an amazing Groupon deal for three nights at the Bellagio, Sansa couldn’t say no. _The only way to celebrate turning 21 is Vegas,_ she said, and now here they are, getting ready before hitting the strip.

“You should be, you knocked it out of the park,” Margie says. “I’m sure a certain _fabulously_ dressed someone will be blown away,” and she arches a perfectly manicured eyebrow when she glances up at Sansa.

“Oh stop it,” she huffs, turning away to get her outfit out of the garment bag hanging in the closet, to hide the sudden blush that has crept its way over her.

“Still trying to deny it? Well,” she sighs, unzipping her makeup bag to rifle through its contents, “I guess that just makes you two perfect for each other. He’s as adamant as you are there’s nothing there, but _believe_ me, I see the way he looks at you. So does Robb, and sometimes _he_ couldn’t get a clue if you handed it to him,” she says, and Sansa laughs.

“Jon is just a friend. A longtime family friend. I’ve known him since I was nine, for God’s sake,” and she glares at her friend when she realizes Margaery is saying the words right along with her.

“So you’ve said a thousand times,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

There’s no way she’d ever admit it, even to Margaery who has been like a sister to her for almost three years, ever since she and Robb met in college, but she isn’t wrong. Jon Snow has grown up right alongside Robb, turning boy to man before her very eyes but without the annoying side effect of being her brother. But no, she’ll never say any of this out loud, not when she’s positive he looks at her like a kid sister, little goody two shoes Sansa Stark, who’s only ever had As and Bs, who’s only ever had one boyfriend and two clove cigarettes her entire life. It makes her heart beat, imagining him dressed to the nines downstairs, hair swept back away from his face, hands in his pockets the way sexy men do on magazine covers, and she briefly inserts him in an _Ocean’s 11_ type scenario, and that makes her grin.

“Fabulously dressed, huh?” she says lightly, like sunshine through lace or the tickle of a feather.

Sansa stoops to grab her heels from the bottom of the closet, turns to bring her outfit back to the bed. Margie grins, leaning into her with a predatory glint in her eye.

“Impeccable,” she whispers, and Sansa laughs despite herself.

Margie tries on every dress she brought, takes one look at the sequined top and chiffon skirt Sansa puts on and immediately changes back into the first one she tried, a bandage dress the vivid pop of jade, a hug to each curve. They are strapped into their shoes and all done up, Margie’s hair a tumble of beachy waves, Sansa’s ironed straight to fall past the center of her back, they are misted with perfume and dusted with bronzer, two little tea cakes of _lady_ when they step out of the elevators. She can’t help but feel like they’re in a movie when they cross the crowded lobby, and she can’t help but notice that more than a few men stop in their tracks to watch them walk by.

“I _told_ you you’re going to slay it tonight,” Margie says, eyes cast down as she texts Robb. “Although I’m not wearing any underwear, so I might be slaying it a little bit too,” she whispers with a smirk and a wink that make Sansa laugh.

“Oh, wow,” Sansa murmurs when Jon and her brother push away from a craps table to walk towards them, because Margie wasn’t lying when she said he was well dressed.

Jon is in a black suit so well fitted it looks like it was professionally tailored, and the silk of his dove grey tie is the only slash of color against his black dress shirt. Robb looks handsome too, but _Robb Shmobb_ she thinks as her gaze flicks back to Jon, because who cares about her brother when Jon is walking her way. He’s got a cocktail glass in his hand, and now she’s blushing because his other is tucked in his pocket, all GQ confidence and slow burn swagger.

“There’s the birthday girl,” Jon says once the four of them are standing in a square together, boys versus girls, the battle of the sexes as they all regard each other. “You look beautiful, Sansa,” Jon says, hiding his smile behind his glass as he takes a drink.

“So do you,” she breathes, making him choke on his sip and making Robb laugh. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she says, cheeks a flame as Robb pounds Jon on the back.

“Well, I think you could call that a glowing review,” Margaery says once Jon has recovered. “You look good too, baby,” she says when Robb steps into her, arm a loop around her hips as he kisses her.

“Not as good as you do,” he says, and Sansa and Jon exchange a raised-eyebrow glance when they start making out.

“Thank you, by the way,” he murmurs when they’re all seated at a blackjack table with another couple, Jon leaning in to her so she can smell the subtle spice of his cologne. She narrowly avoids closing her eyes and breathing deep.

“You’re welcome, and thank you right back,” she smiles, watching with delight as he lifts a hand to call over a waitress, because everything he does is so masculine. She knows what he looks like when he throws a football, when he jogs down the street with his dog, how he looks in his firefighter turnout gear. Now she knows how it looks when he’s dressed up like James Bond ordering drinks for ladies.

“What’ll it be, hon?” the waitress says with a snappy smile, all pluck and wiggle that makes Sansa instantly jealous.

“It’s this young lady’s 21st birthday,” he says, resting a light hand on Sansa’s back, and she tilts her head, trying to ignore the sweep of gooseflesh she gets when his fingers drag against her bare skin before his hand drops back to the table. _Did I imagine that?_

“Happy birthday, hon,” she says. “What’ll it be?”

“Um, can I have a French 75? Or is that too- yeah, sorry, that’s too much work,” she says when the waitress blinks in surprise, and she is annoyed with herself for sounding like a snobby idiot. But they’re one of her favorite drinks, the fancy signature cocktails her mother makes for holidays, the ones she’s been allowed to sip since she turned 18.

“How about champagne,” Jon suggests, and Sansa nods enthusiastically, grateful for the rescue.

“Make it two,” Margaery chimes in with a smile.

“To Sansa on her birthday,” Robb says once they’ve all got a drink in hand, and the card dealer grins as they clink glasses, and the couple sitting on the other side of Robb shout _Happy Birthday_ in cheerful, drunken revelry.

“Happy birthday, Sansa,” Jon says against her ear so she can hear him over the raucous. “Hope it’s as good as you deserve,” and she can’t help but close her eyes and murmur her thanks to have the deep husk of his voice so close.

 

“Well this _sucks,_ ” Sansa says hotly, standing with her hands on her hips as they look up and down the long walkway cutting a path through rows and rows and rows of slot machines. “I can’t believe we lost them,” she says. “It’s my stupid birthday, I’ve lost $50 already, and now my friend and brother disappear.”

They are standing in the Paris, the ceiling painted like a gauzy blue sky, the mellow lighting a valiant attempt at natural, and they’ve only just gotten there and Margaery and Robb are nowhere to be seen. Jon doesn’t want to make her think of her brother having sex, but if he knows his friend at all, and he’s known him half his life since he was 12, that guy probably has Margie pushed up against a wall somewhere.

He drains the beer he walked in with, tosses it in a nearby trashcan and turns to head back to her side. She is gorgeous even when she is upset, all lovely sparkle and shimmer as she pouts, all candy sprinkle sweet even with her blue eyes ringed with black. It’s hard to believe that knobby knees and coltish legs spread out and up into this woman, into this sway of auburn as she turns on her champagne colored heel to look the other way for the rest of their party. It’s hard to believe that pop band posters and questionable outfits turned into a classically trained musician who wears dresses he can only describe as slinky. Jon clears his throat and tries to call Robb again, and she turns around again to watch him with hopeful eyes. He shakes his head and ends the call.

“Voicemail, right off the bat. I told him to charge his phone but I don’t think he did.”

“Margie isn’t answering either,” Sansa sighs. “Some birthday, huh,” she says, and there’s something about the utter dejection and sadness in her voice that makes him shake his head.

 “Oh no you don’t,” he says, sliding his phone back into his pocket before he takes Sansa by the hand. “Pretty girls don’t have bad birthdays, so we’re going to make sure this one is a fucking knockout,” he says, turning on his heel, tugging her back to the door, and the sudden change in direction elicits a high squeal out of her that makes him grin.

“Jon, where are we going? I can’t walk much more in these shoes,” she says.

“We’ll cab it then. We’re going to Ghostbar,” he says of the bar on the top of the Palms, “and we’re going to get you drunk, and we’re going to get you grinning,” he says, watching her mouth spread under the slather of a smile.

“I’m grinning right now,” she says, and he laughs.

“Then we’re right on track.”

She’s a happy chatter on the cab ride, is a tilt of her hips towards him as she manages to cross her long legs here in the backseat, and he resists the urge to rest a hand on her knee. Her skin looks smooth enough to lick, and he has to clear his throat and gaze out the window at the passing splash of lights to derail his train of thought. It’s been eight months since his breakup with Ygritte, eight long cold months, his longest dry spell since he lost his virginity freshman year of college, and it takes him half the cab ride to get his mind out of the gutter.

“Oh my god, this view is _amazing,_ ” she says once they’ve made it through the door, through the crowds, past the bar and outside. She shakes her head with wonder, lowers her gaze to the red of her cape cod that she drinks from.

“I’m glad you like it,” he says, “My buddy Sam took me here for _my_ 21 st."

“Sam’s the big guy with the sweet girlfriend, right? Gilly? I like those two,” she says when he nods.

“He bought me my first legal drink right over at that bar,” he says, tapping his beer against her glass. “So consider me paying it forward,” he says, voice raised against the whip of desert wind and the bump of bass behind them, the drunken chatter of a hundred people.

“And here I thought you brought me because I’m special,” she says with a grin.

She is more vixen tonight that she has ever been with him, but then again they’ve never gone out drinking together. Not unless a few Stark house parties count, and Jon doesn’t think they do, not when this is the alternative, here where they’re dressed up and all grown up, here where the breezes keep trying to steal tastes of her hair, here where he can smell her perfume because they stand that close to better hear one another.

“You _are_ special,” he says.

“And pretty? You called me pretty at the other place,” she says, leaning her hip against the Plexiglas wall that keeps her from falling 55 stories. Jon smiles with a roll of his eyes.

“Yeah, pretty. You know you’re pretty, Sansa. Gorgeous, really,” he says, because there’s liquor in his blood and it makes him bold, because he could always blame the loud music and say she heard him wrong.

“I didn’t know _you_ thought I was gorgeous, though,” she says, too drunk maybe to realize she’s just accepted a compliment without her usual _Thank you_ and manners, but the brazen in her makes him smile.

“Anybody with a brain thinks you’re gorgeous,” he says, reaching out and grasping a lock of her hair, watching the wind draw it out of his light pinch. When he looks back up at her he is startled to realize she has stepped into him.

“You’re not just anybody though,” she says, tapping her finger against his chest, drawing it down the length of his tie. “You’re a standalone kind of guy,” she says, watching her finger run its course before it drops off of his body. “Super cute, too,” she says, or at least he thinks she says it, quiet as it was, but he’s watching her mouth and so he’s fairly confident.

“Quite the compliment, coming from you,” he says, lower now that they’re standing nearly toe to toe.

He risks another touch to run his fingers through her hair, and his heart hammers as she tilts her head into the touch with her eyes closed. _What is happening, what is happening, what is happening,_ he thinks, because never in his wildest dreams, never in his dark hungry thoughts did he ever think this could happen. But she’s looking at him like he’s a lollipop, like he’s something to savor and devour, and it _thrills_ him.

“I think you should kiss me, Jon,” she says, lifting her hand again, but instead of prodding him in the chest again, she takes a loose hold of his tie.

“I think I should, too,” he says, and his eyes slide shut when she gives his tie a steady slow tug, pulling him into the sweet snare of her.

“Happy birthday to me,” she murmurs against his scruff, and he grins before pressing his mouth to hers, before he has her kiss and the lick of her tongue, and his head swims when he thinks he’s kissing Sansa, here on top of a world that’s completely made up of light.

 

It’s the crack in a dam that turns into a rush, when he leans in and kisses her, and they hover here with that solitary point of contact before Jon lifts his hand to cup her face, and that’s all the suggestion she needs. Sightlessly she sets her drink down on the little table behind her, body a half twist away from him as she does so, and she can feel the cold press of a beer bottle against the small of her back when he draws her back to him. His greed makes her smile against his mouth as she winds her arms around his neck, and now she has the full body press of him against her, a kiss from head to toe, one that makes her far dizzier than the height, far drunker than the alcohol.

Jon’s beer disappears from her back as he presumably sets it on the table behind her, and then there’s a shatter of glass that she instantly forgets because of the way he slides his arms around her, the way he fists her dress as if he wants to tear it to pieces. _He’s kissing me, he’s kissing me,_ she thinks on repeat, girlhood dreams erupting into a firework feeling of reality, because everything is so vivid, right now. The scent of him and the rub of his scruff against her chin, the push and slide of his tongue in her mouth, the slow drop of his hand as it comes to rest just above her ass.

“Oh my god,” she whispers when the kiss breaks like a fever, when he rests his forehead against hers but doesn’t let her go, and she hopes he keeps her a prisoner forever, here in this devastating circle of his arms.

“I’ve wanted to do that for longer than I’d like to admit,” he says, a murmur against her mouth.

“How long,” she says, fingernails a light drag at the shag of hair on the nape of his neck.

“Years,” he says, and she feels a naughty little spike of pleasure because he had a girlfriend not that long ago, and even then he was thinking about her. It almost makes her feel guilty, but it’s gone, just like breaking glass.

“Got a thing for redheads, huh,” she says, thinking of his copper haired ex-girlfriend, and he laughs, head tipping back and away from her though he still keeps her snug up against him.

“I have a thing for Sansas,” he says when he looks at her once more, and she is about to protest when he moves his arm from around her, but she closes her open mouth when he lifts a hand to sift it through her hair, to rest it against the side of her throat under her ear.

“Lucky me, then,” she says, and she whimpers when he kisses her again, good and long and deep, the kind of kiss to curl your toes and arch your spine, and Sansa does both.

“Excuse me, but I’m afraid you two are going to have to leave,” says a deep boom of a voice that makes her jump, and she and Jon break apart only just, enough to look up at a huge hulk of a man dressed in a black t-shirt.

“What, why? What’s wrong, man?” Jon says, his arm sliding from her waist as he squares his stance to face the bouncer. The big man tilts his head to the side, and when Sansa follows his gaze with her own she sees Jon’s broken bottle and her shattered cocktail glass.

“Well, shit,” she says blankly, raising her eyebrows and grimacing as she and Jon look at each other, and suddenly they burst into simultaneous laughter.

“Yep, you two are cut off. Frank, these guys are cut off,” the bouncer shouts over his shoulder, and a man behind the outdoor bar nods his head as he pours shots.

“I’ve never been kicked out of a bar before,” Sansa says brightly as they ride a half full elevator back down to the Palms’ casino floor, and a few of their fellow passengers laugh. Her feet ache but she’s having too much fun, here in Vegas on her birthday, here with Jon’s hand on her hip, here with the buzz and thrum of a handful of cocktails rioting in her bloodstream.

“Anything else on the bucket list you want to cross off?” he asks from behind her, and she tries not to moan when he drops a kiss to her bare shoulder. “You’re calling the shots tonight, birthday girl,” he says against her ear.

“I want to win some money,” she says, and they linger when the elevator doors open on the ground floor and the other people leave. “I lost $50 in only five hands. I wanna get rich,” she says firmly, grinning when her declaration makes him laugh.

“All right, sweetheart, let’s get you rich,” he says, sliding his fingers between hers when he takes her by the hand, and she feels like royalty when they stride out of the casino, she feels like a celebrity with a movie star for a date when he hails them another taxi, and the dazzle of lights and sounds all around her make her feel like a star.

It’s a _much_ more interesting cab ride than the first one, here where she’s got one leg practically across his lap when he kisses her so hard she’s pushed up against the door. Jon slides a hand from the underside of her knee almost entirely up the back of her thigh, and now he gets a moan out of her that makes him hum, makes him bite and suck her lower lip. _I’m making out with Jon,_ she thinks wildly, and it’s just so hard to believe. She remembers him on prom night with Robb in his rented tux, remembers him on camping trips with a blade of grass sticking out of his mouth, remembers his graduation from the academy. She remembers how thoughts went from _Robb’s friend_ to the sexy boy with dark hair, how fantasy and daydream went from boyfriend Harry to grey eyed Jon Snow.

“I started to think of you,” she pants when he abandons her mouth to lay claim to her throat, when his fingers dig into her thigh. “I started to think of you when I, oh,” she says with a breathy sort of halt, because five drinks is still not enough to make her brave enough for _that_ word.

“When you what,” he says, running his hand from the under to the over, hidden from view under the flip and flimsy of her chiffon skirt.

“I can’t say it,” she says, cupping his face in her hands to bring him back to her, because she wants more kisses and damn it if she won’t get them. Jon hums, and she can feel him grin against her mouth.

“Tell me, Sansa,” he whispers, and she gasps so high when his fingertips brush the lace trim of her panties that the cab driver turns up the stereo. “When you what, did this?” he asks, fingers a faint press between her legs, and now she whines, squeezes her thighs together around his hand to make him stop, or maybe to make him keep going.

“Yes,” she says, too worked up to care anymore, but he’s groaning now against her mouth, is a brief limp slump against her as if her admission is too much to handle, and the feeling of power that gives her is almost as much a turn on as what he’s doing.

“I guess we have a lot in common then,” he says and there’s a certain amount of pride to know he’s taken himself in hand with her on his mind, and it makes her tilt her hips up, makes her want to ask him in, makes her dig her nails into the back of his suit jacket.

 “Jon,” she whispers.

“Yes?” he answers, but that’s when the cab comes to a halt and the rap music is shut off, and his hand flies from between her thighs.

“That’ll be $15.50 and a cold fucking shower,” the cabbie snaps.

 

He has to wait several moments before he can walk into Terrible’s Casino, and Sansa is a pink cheeked giggle with her hand over her mouth as he paces in the parking lot willing himself to calm down.

“This is all your fault,” he says, pointing a finger at her as she drifts over to him, all long legs and short skirt and sparkling shoes. “Oh no you don’t, you stay away or I’m going to be stuck out here all night,” he says, laughing when she shrugs, groaning when she slides her arms up and over his shoulders.

He’s starting to get used to it, the feeling of her snaring him in and drowning him.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she says when he kisses her, when he has the dip of her waist under his hands, and he smiles because it’s exactly what’s been going through his head since she pulled on his tie. “Is it really real? Do you really, actually like me?”

“Big time,” he says, lifting a hand to run his thumb along her jaw, to tip her face up as he kisses her again. ‘Like’ doesn’t seem to cut it, though, not to the deeper part of him that’s watched her grow up just a few years behind him, that knows her almost as well as he knows himself.

“Something else we have in common, then,” she sighs. Jon’s never been the kind of man to have lucky stars but he’s counting them, right now.

“Come on, gorgeous,” he says with a slow exhale. “Let’s see how much money you can win.”

She doesn’t do too badly especially after two rounds of chocolate cake shots, and the evening turns high gloss bright and swimming, flares of sound and riots of color, the long sway of her as she wins three hands of $5 blackjack in a row and can’t stop shrieking with her fists pumped in the air. He’s not wasted but he’s drunk enough to pull her on his lap when the table fills with gamblers, to push aside her hair to kiss her spine, to rub his beard against her skin when he sees it makes her shiver. He’s drunk enough to wonder if this is magic, if this is what falling in love feels like though he’s been there done that, because right now it feels like nothing he’s ever experienced.

“I can’t believe it, I’m up $78,” she says when they’ve grown bored of blackjack and sit side by side at the bar in the corner of the casino.

“Cheers to the birthday girl,” he says, tapping his shot glass against hers. “Are you having a good birthday, Sansa?”

“I am having the _best_ birthday,” she says with an exaggerated nod, with a slow syrup smile that nearly gets him hard again when her gaze drops to his mouth. “And it’s all because of you,” she says, eyes closing as she drinks her shot and then chases it with a bite into a lemon wedge.

“Who loves ya, baby,” he says as he knocks back the liquor, another chocolate cake shot, sweeter than his usual but right up her alley. As he sucks his lemon he feels like he is swallowing a mouthful of her when he freezes, because he’s just heard what he said.

Jon slides a glance her way as words scramble around in his brain, trying to make sense of themselves and to explain away his flippant remark, to reassure her that he’s not some psycho who pulls idiotic grand gestures halfway through a date. _Is this even a date,_ he wonders, but then Sansa grins at him, cat with cream, and she picks up his empty shot glass, turns it as she licks off the leftover sugar on the rim.

“You, one of these days, I hope,” she says.

“You’re one dangerous woman, Sansa Stark,” he says when she sets his glass down beside hers, and she grins, rests her elbow on the bar and her head in her hand as she turns on her stool to face him.

“Good. I want to be dangerous. I feel like a girl _should_ be dangerous on her birthday.”

“Danger in spades, sweetheart,” he says, leaning back as he turns his body towards hers. “So, you’ve gotten kicked out of a bar,” he says, ticking it off on his finger.

“Made out in a taxi,” she says, and he laughs as he ticks that one off too.

“Yes you did,” he says, and there was a fleeting introduction between him and a pair of panties that he’d like to revisit.

“And I won almost $80,” she says happily, turning away from him to get the bartender’s attention.

“And you got rich,” he says, holding up a third finger. “What’s next, birthday girl?”

“I want to do another shot and _then_ ,” she says, sliding off her stool to stand between his cocked out knees, to lean in and drape herself on his chest as she gazes up at him with bright, liquor-shined eyes. “ _Then_ I want to do something _crazy_.”

 

Sunday, December 2, 10:38am

 

“Oh my god,” Sansa whispers as memories flood her, flashes of the entire night from start to delicious ending, flash of drinks and cab rides and laughing, flutter of such devastating kisses, strobe light flicker of tearing off Jon’s clothes before he hauled her up into his arms only to cross the room and throw her on the bed. _This bed,_ she thinks, but there was also another stop they made before coming back to the hotel, and it’s _that_ little errand that has her heart beating rabbit-quick.

“That sounds awfully familiar,” Jon says, all sleepy tousle and messy bed head, all lazy smile and naked hips barely covered as he opens his eyes. “Although I preferred the way you said it last night,” he says, and despite the sudden panic that’s consumed her from what they did last night, his words linger in her mind. _How he licked into her and made her beg him to never stop ever, how he pushed inside her and made her cry out his name before he even moved._ Sansa shivers, shakes her head to try and clear out all those warm feelings that come sliding back out from the periphery.

“No, I mean, oh my _god,_ Jon, do you remember what we did last night?”

“Vividly,” he says. He’s on his side and props his head up in his right hand as his left runs a course down her side, dragging the sheet down with the gesture. “I hope I never forget it,” he says, gently pulling her folded arms down and away from her breasts.

“Jon,” she whispers, eyes sliding shut because it’s impossible to focus with him naked and tempting like this, even with a hangover and a wedding ring on her finger.

“Yes, Sansa?” he says, scooting towards her and rolling on top of her, and she’s on her back again, a stretch of putty under him and these kisses he’s leaving all over her breasts.

“Jon, listen to me, do you, oh- do you um, _oh,_ ” she gasps, scrounging around for self-control, but the headache fades when his hands roam places his kisses can’t reach, and it’s hard to ignore what her body’s trying to tell her. “Dammit, Jon, we got _married_ last night, do you remember?”

He freezes, all movements paused like she’s hit a button a remote control, and it’s almost funny because he’s mid-lick, halted right before he pulls her breast into his mouth. Sansa cranes her neck to look down at him, to wait for the reaction because this can’t be _it_ , not after she dropped that bomb on him.

_I want to do something crazy, she said. Her vision was already going blurry, going a little double, but they’d been having much too much fun. Sansa didn’t want the night to end._

_It’s your party, birthday girl, you call the shots, he said._

_I wanna doing somethin’ super Vegasy. Like sky-dive crazy._

_I don’t think we can sky dive right now, Sansa, he laughed._

_Sansa snapped her fingers and grinned, grabbed him by the tie as they waited or a cab in the parking lot. I have an idea, she said._

“Jon, say something. Are you mad at me?” she whispers, because honestly this is her fault, and she’s worried he’s reliving the same moment she is, when she said  _take us to a drive through chapel_ to the cab driver, when Jon just laughed and laughed as they barreled down the strip towards the altar.

“No, I’m not mad at you,” he says when he’s finally collected himself, and he presses a kiss to the rise of her breast, far lighter than the activity he was previously interested in. “Not at all.”

Jon lifts his head and rolls onto his back before he sits up, scooting back to rest against the headboard. Sansa follows suit, dragging the sheet up past her breasts as she sits beside him, and she’s relieved when he lifts his arm and pulls her against him. He lifts his left hand and gazes down at the thin silver bad on his ring finger.

“Jesus Christ, we really did it, didn’t we,” he says, picking up her left hand to look at the matching ring she wears.

“Yeah, we did,” she says, gazing down at their hands. It’s terrifying but it’s also sexy, the simplicity of those rings, that they match and mean she and Jon are bonded, however drunkenly it occurred.

“I was planning on asking you to be my girlfriend, not my wife,” he says with a chuckle, shaking his head before he lets it rest against the headboard. “Talk about cart before the horse.”

“Are you- you’re making jokes about this right now?” She is incredulous, but his cheek makes her smile despite herself. “We’re _married,_ Jon. It’s not one of those stays-in-Vegas things, either. It’s sort of, you know, legally binding all over the world.” Jon laughs.

“I know it is, trust me,” he says, “but it’s not like we can’t break it off or whatever,” he says, tightening his arm that’s around her shoulders, drawing her in so he can kiss her temple, and suddenly Sansa feels sad. “I’m sure they file these things all the time.”

“I never pictured myself as divorced,” she says, dropping her hand in her lap, spinning the ring around her finger.

“You want to stay married, then?” he says grinning when she looks up at him with a dropped open jaw.

“Jon,” she says, but she has no idea what to say after that, and so she simply stares up at him. _How is he so handsome?_

“Crazier things have happened, birthday girl,” he says, but despite his bold words and brassy smile, he jumps just like she does when his phone rings from the nightstand on his side of the bed. “It’s Robb,” he says when he unplugs it from the charger – _because that’s the kind of guy he is, the guy who remembers to charge his phone even when he’s hammered._

“Now they show up,” Sansa says with a roll of her eyes as Jon answers the call. She gazes down at the ring, wonders, wonders, wonders.

“No, she’s all right, she’s here with me,” Jon says, turning to gaze at her as he talks on the phone. He’s a soft half-smile, the drop down of his gaze to her hand, and he lifts it in his, brings it to her mouth so he can kiss her knuckles.

She’s grown up with him, knew the rowdy kid and the quiet teenager, knew him as a friend and now knows him as a lover, feels rounded out with all of this new Jon knowledge, all of this information that she can only describe as scrumptious. Sansa sees herself falling for him if she hasn’t already, and she wonders how quickly a person can fall in love. _You want to stay married, then,_ he asked her, and she doesn’t know if he was joking, but there is something giddy and wild about the idea, something equally soft and Sunday morning cozy about it, too. _It’s Sunday morning now,_ she thinks with a girlish smile.

“Breakfast, huh? We’d need some uh, we’d need some time to get ourselves ready but that should be okay,” Jon says as he watches her, and then his smile turns wicked, the naughty boy smile he used to make when he’d bring her frogs from the creek behind his house. “Hang on, let me ask my wife.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO THIS IS FOR MY DARLING BEX'S BIRTHDAY TODAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY DEAR, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.
> 
> This shit is LONG AS HELL so I don't know whether to apologize or say you're welcome, but I DO KNOW that I want to say thank you to Bex for being such an awesome buddy and thank you to all who read the follow up to this little one shot that couldn't stay a one shot.
> 
> XOXOXOXOXOXO
> 
>  
> 
> [PICSET FINALLY](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/132282914683/bright-lights-big-city-chapter-2)

**December**

It’s  _cold_  tonight, even though Pittsburgh snowstorms have nothing on the monsters he experiences up in Erie, and maybe it’s that thicker blood of his that keeps him lingering on Ned Stark’s porch. In the end, though, that’s a lie, because even if he weren’t used to it, even if he were out here in his underwear instead of three layers and a pair of dark jeans, he’d still hesitate to reach in the middle of that Christmas wreath to bang the knocker on the door. Jon frowns with a wince, pulling out his phone with an ungloved hand to scroll through his texts from earlier that afternoon.

**Robb:** Still coming down for Xmas party?

**Jon:** Yeah Sam and Gilly are all set to watch Ghost

**Robb:** cool just come to my folks whenever you get in town M and I are already here

**Jon:** Ok what about Sansa?

**Robb:** I’d say bring her too but she’s already here :P hurry up before they close the interstate

**Jon:** ok

He reads and rereads them, even after a two and a half hour drive, as if something else will pop up in between them, some sort of answer from his best friend, some sort of reassurance that will tell him this evening won’t be as awkward as he fears. Aside from a few texts right after their trip to Vegas, he hasn’t spoken to Sansa at all. The glitter and gold of that weekend, the back-scratching tension and hand-cupping heat that piled up all around them have all been replaced with an awkward silence and the worrying question that maybe he imagined everything, that maybe he was so blind drunk he dreamed it.  _No,_  he thinks, looking over his shoulder to where he’s parked in the street in a pool of streetlight, still half considering a quick getaway before anyone sees him.  _No, she was in my arms, she was in my bed. She made me- I can still taste- I-_

His phone chimes to life with that burble of sound that means he’s gotten a text, and he jumps from the interruption of his thoughts. Jon swallows when he looks back down at the screen of his phone, when he sees who it is and what it says.

**Sansa:** I see you. ;)

Stupidly he is about to ask her how before he comes to his senses and looks up, and there behind one of the tall, thin windows that flank the front door, Sansa is standing with her phone in hand and a small smile on her face. He breathes out with a shudder and is struck dumb for a moment; it suddenly feels freezing out here, to have such a warm sight in front of him. She is as lovely as she always is, even with a wall of brick and pane of glass between them. But then he remembers the feel of her mouth and the things she said to him, in a bar on top of the world, in a cab hurtling them between this insanity and the next. He blows on his chilled fingers and taps out a reply.

**Jon:** I see you too. Last time I saw you I wasn’t this cold, though.

**Sansa:** I can help with that.

**Jon:** Same way as last time?

He clears his throat and slides his phone back into his pocket when he hears the click of one lock and then two. There is a rush of warm air against his face, sounds of distant music and a single shriek of laughter, smells of the season riding the heat as it spills out on the porch.

She’s here too now, hair falling forward as she looks down and back behind her when she closes the door after stepping outside. And with that it’s just the two of them in a world of snow and silence on a long block of old stately homes perched on their hill; it’s the upturn of her face when she gazes at him for true now out here, the fingers of her left hand drifting across her cheek as she tucks a sheaf of hair behind her ear. And then he realizes she took off her ring, and then he feels like an idiot. Self-preservation makes him tuck his right hand in the pocket of his pea coat, the hand that wears the ring now so no one else will realize he’s wearing a wedding band.  _So no one else will realize what a fucking moron I am._

“Hi,” she says on the exhale, and he can see how shallow her breathing is, even all wrapped up in a sweater dress, and he wonders if she’s as nervous as he is, but then nobody really  _likes_  awkward hellos.

“Hi, yourself,” he murmurs, gaze a drop to the knee high boots on her feet and back up again.

It looks like someone poured her into that dress, soft cashmere the color of how vanilla smells, her loose hair an undone ribbon on a gift that’s just been wrapped, and how he wishes it were for him. But there’s silence between them, snow-chilled silence and a stretch of three weeks since they were all tangled up together, warm with tied tongues loosened by champagne, and he can still remember the pull and stretch of her.  _Goddammit._

“I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you,” she says with a nervous fidget, voice pitched higher than usual.

“You took off your ring,” he says at the same time, their low voices huffed and muffled together like numbed winter secrets out here. But then again, this is  _all_ a secret, at least to most.

“I- wait, what?” she says, frowning as if she didn’t hear or worse, as if she did. Jon shakes his head.

“Nothing, I’m sorry I interrupted. Go on,” he says stiffly, because he was the one who initiated every text to no avail, because suddenly he’s the one standing here half angry and half hurt and completely blown away all over again just at the sight of her. Any scrap of explanation will do, he’s that undone.

“I um, okay,” she says, turning to look through one skinny window and then the other, before she straightens and gazes at him once more. Her fingers clasp her phone, press it to her chest in a prayer or an appeal or both, and then she lifts her eyes to the porch ceiling, bites her lip and grins.

“Okay so first off, my professor asked me to play in a string quartet at a private party in her own home, like the  _second_  we got back to Pennsylvania. I’ve never practiced so hard in my life, I barely ate, slept, you name it. I mean, I was the only student asked to play with  _professionals_ , and I don’t know if you know this, but there’s only one cello in a quartet, and it was me. I mean, there’s only one viola, too, but—”

“Sansa, that’s awesome,” he says with a smile, and his interruption brings her gaze back to his, and he’s relieved that her radio silence was so easily justified, so overwhelmingly understandable. “Seriously, that’s incredible. I bet you wowed the hell out of everyone, didn’t you?” he says though he’s never heard her play live. But he’s seen a couple of videos on Arya’s YouTube channel (as the victim of a prank involving several fake spiders), and he knows full well how fastidious she is when it comes to perfecting her craft.

“I did okay,” she says with a sudden rush of shyness, cheeks bright pink from the cold, from that undercurrent of pride she hides with nice manners and that blue sea gaze she always averts when talking about herself.

“I know you were busy but I would have liked to know about the concert. You could have called me and told me,” he says quietly.

Jon steps into her because he can’t help himself, because there’s always the excuse of the cold. Sansa’s mouth twists and it makes him frown, because once more she’s looking anywhere but him and he wonders what the hell happened in three weeks besides being in a string quartet.

“I- I would have, but, I mean, after everything that happened in Vegas, I figured maybe you’d have called  _me._  Instead of texting, you know? I know it’s the day and age to never pick up a phone to make a  _call_  anymore, but with what happened- after what we did,” she says, voice fading to a whisper as she lifts her eyes to look at him with a pained expression, open and honest, tender like a bruise. “Jon, I had hoped it meant something to you. It meant a hell of a lot to me.”

Jon exhales in a rush. Now he  _really_  feels like an idiot, and he reaches out to grasp the soft of sweater, the fine bones of the wrist inside it, and he lightly pulls her in to him. “It meant the world to me, Sansa,” he says. He takes one more step so they are close enough to dance under some fairytale moon, so close he can feel the warmth of her even with so much cold around them.

“Really?” A murmur like a snowflake, small and perfect and nothing else like it on earth.

Jon smiles, flexes his hand for warmth before he takes it from his pocket to sift fingers through her hair. His blood is a dizzying rush from the rabbit-beat of his heart when she tilts her head into the touch with the sliding shut of her eyes, when her mouth opens to let go of a breath she must have been holding. It gusts hot and shivery all at once here in the close space between them, a little cloud of want and worry set free because she doesn’t need it anymore, not if he has anything to say about it.

“Yeah,” he says, and her eyes open when he pulls his hand back and holds it open, knuckles towards her, so she can see the ring. “Really.”

Her eyes are a blue-lit dance between his hand and him as he tells her he was too nervous to actually call, that he thought texts are what all the smooth guys do these days though he doesn’t think he’s ever actually  _been_  smooth. He tells her he’s checked his phone every morning though they stopped talking two weeks ago, and she’s got a nip to her lower lip as her smile spreads and spreads, butter and honey, nutmeg and cream.  _I put that there,_  he thinks, and he wants to put other things there too. Things that take a heartbeat, like a kiss and a sigh. Things that take hours, like a slow moan and a push that—

“I still have mine, too,” she says with a rush, her hand lifting to dip in her dress’s loose cowl neck that drapes against her collarbone, and his eyes widen only slightly before she draws a silver necklace up and out from under her dress. “I knew I couldn’t keep it on my hand, but I didn’t want to take it off, either,” she says, and he grins when he sees her own ring swaying, a dainty little pendulum at the end of its chain.

“Oh,” he says, and the foolish farm boy simplicity of it makes him flush with embarrassment.

Not that he cares at this point, not when she lets loose a wind chime laugh, not when she runs her palms up his chest as he wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her against him. Not when he finally has that heartbeat kiss. There is the slow open of her mouth when he opens his, the hot fizzle of glitter and gold all over again with that first lick and then the second, the hum in the back of her throat when he lifts a hand to the nape of her neck. These are the things that stoke him up, that seem to sate him and starve him all at once.

“I missed you,” she says after several moments or lifetimes, whichever last longest or mean the most. “I missed you, Jon, but I thought maybe you didn’t miss me,” she says in his ear once they break the kiss to embrace, once he can really draw her in tight and snug against him, once he can turn his head to bury his face in her hair.

“Like crazy, Sansa,” he says into the auburn. “I missed you like crazy.”

He is just past wondering if he can sneak her out to his car with the heater on when they spring apart at the sound of the door opening. The soft glow of porch light and secluded romance burst apart with the sudden rectangle of brilliant foyer light that yawns wide across them, with the gush of centrally heated air, with the cheery raucous from inside the house.  Sansa spins on her heel so fast she staggers back into him, and before he can help himself or remember himself, he wraps a steadying arm around her.

“Aren’t  _you_  two lucky it’s just me,” Margie says with a smirk and a glass of champagne in hand. She’s in an emerald green dress that is bathed almost black in the orange cinnamon warmth of light behind her. “Cheers to your ability to keep  _this,_ ” she says with a gesture towards them, “under wraps tonight. Lord knows you’ll need all the help you can get, if a freezing cold porch can get  _this_  steamy.”

 

_ One hour later _

She’s been buzzing for a week on the success of her professor’s concert, all pie in the sky and head in the clouds, and she has had Shostakovich in her head for days, but now it’s like she’s drugged, having Jon here, and  _oh,_  he’s here. He is everywhere, and even in this sprawl of a house it seems impossible for her to avoid him. Not that she wants to. There’s a tight little tug in her chest whenever their eyes meet across the room, one of those sweet gnawing pains that feels good at the same time it torments, one of those tortures you cannot quite keep away from.

“You’re going to set him on fire if you keep looking at him like that,” Margie whispers in her ear once her mom and uncle Edmure drift off for another tray of finger foods.

“I can’t help it,” Sansa murmurs as she sips her French 75, watching Jon bow his head and nod as he talks with her dad and Robb. “He’s just… Okay, so when I was younger, like before high school, I thought he was just this quiet nerdy type. And then it was more the, you know, silent brooding kind of thing, and it started to get kind of hot. Now, though,” she breathes and then she laughs at herself. “It’s like he’s um, like he’s set to smolder and the dial is broken.” She feels dumb for saying it, but there it is.

As if on cue, Jon lifts his gaze to her mid-laugh at one of Mr. Manderly’s jokes, and it’s the striking of a match, and it makes the heat of her blush plummet down, down, down. It’s like swallowing a lick of flame.

“Set to smolder, huh,” Margie says, wiggling her fingers when Robb nods and grins at her. “I’ll have to use that line on your brother later.”

“Gross, Margie,” Sansa says with a huff of laughter that fogs the edge of her flute before she takes another long swallow of champagne and cognac.

“So, Sansa,” Jonelle Cerwyn asks as she materializes from behind them, her normally sallow cheeks a pretty tipsy-pink from her third glass of champagne. “Your mother tells me you went on a date with a nice boy she set you up with, a friend of her sister’s named Harry?”

“Oh my god,” Sansa mutters with the brief closing of her eyes, because the living room isn’t that big and the way Jon’s smile fades proves he just heard every word. “I um, yeah, Mrs. Cerwyn, I did, it was a nice night,” she says, and she’d like to tell her what kind of guy he  _really_  is, but she doesn’t think tossing out words like  _selfish asshole_ is quite in the holiday spirit. She glances to Jon but his back is turned, and now her heart hammers with the bang-bang of panic.

“I’m sure he was  _lovely,_  dear, your mother has such good taste,” Mrs. Cerwyn says with a tiny burp as she gazes over at Sansa’s father with a watery, dreamy expression.

“Have you ever been to my grandmother’s gallery downtown, ma’am? It’s got the largest collection of contemporary art in Pittsburgh,” Margie says smoothly, linking her arm in Jonelle’s as she gently guides her away from the fireplace towards the Christmas tree, and Sansa mouths  _Thank you_  when her friend grins and rolls her eyes over her shoulder.

There is a buzz against her calf where she tucked her phone between her sock and boot, and Sansa glances around before she bends to retrieve it, lest her parents catch her texting at a family function.

**Jon:** What’s nice boy’s name?

**Sansa:** It’s nothing, honestly. A blind date, it sucked and it was over in an hour.

**Jon:** And here I thought I only missed an awesome concert.

**Sansa:** omg please don’t be mad. I was beyond embarrassed when my MOM tried to hook me up and I got flustered b4 I could say no.

**Jon:** Sansa.

**Sansa:**  He was such a d-bag, Jon, nothing like you. God I wish it had been you. He took me Primanti Bros for a first date, I mean come on.

**Jon:** SANSA.

**Sansa:** What??

**Jon:** Look up.

She does, and just then he lifts his glass to take a long swallow of French red wine, his eyes half closed as he regards her over the rim. Sansa half expects him to flick her off and storm out into the cold evening. But when he glances to the kitchen doorway and tips his head towards it she suddenly feels merry-go-round dizzy, the round and round of a record that’s playing sweet things after weeks of self-pity. Sansa nods quick as she can.

“Look, please don’t be mad at me,” she breathes after they’ve made their random excuses to leave the room, but once they’re safe in the kitchen he sets down his glass and takes her by the hand.

Jon tugs her down two hallways, past her dad’s office and a room full of dusty workout equipment and crafting supplies until they pass the garage and find themselves in the dark laundry room. He kicks the door shut and now it’s nearly pitch black in here, though he finds her easily enough; they’ve all played hide and seek long enough in this house to know its every nook and cranny. It is at least ten degrees cooler than the living room and Sansa would shiver if it weren’t for the hot way his mouth finds her throat, even in the dark.

“Ask me if I’m mad at you, Sansa,” he says against her skin, the scruff of him a rub that brings her right back to that hotel room almost a month ago. Jon’s hands drag around her waist to her back where he fists her dress.

“Are you?” she says, gasping when he walks her back against the dryer, the metal a cold shock against the backs of her legs, but already the southerly roam of his hands is there beneath the knitted hem of her dress. His fingers are warm and pliant, they’re searching and they make her forget that it’s winter now, that it’s a cold lonely room here instead of some snug little den of love.

“No, I’m not,” he says. “Now ask me if I’m jealous.”

His hands are a higher and higher drive up her dress as he steps into her, lifts one leg up around his hips, his hand an upward hoist until she really has nowhere else to go but up and onto the dryer. Suddenly she’s so warm the metal feels like a refreshing spark of cold beneath her, with Jon standing between her spread knees. There is a hand that drifts up her side, over her breast like a skipping stone until it finds the back of her neck and her pulls her down.

“Are you?” she repeats in a strained voice several notes higher than usual.

“ _Yes,_ ” he whispers against her ear, and she’d never think such a confession could make her throb so achingly between the legs, but here she is, putty in his hands, blind save for want.

“Oh, god,” she moans when he kisses her, when she finds his tongue with hers and suddenly she’s breathless, hoping she’ll never quite get it back if it means staying here like this forever. “Jon, I, oh,” she says between the hot wet of kisses.

Words disappear, sift away to the sand of hitched breath and shallow gasps while hands pursue themselves, up the thigh and down the chest, busy, busy fingers, hungry little sprites seeking slake in the tug and removal of a crew neck sweater, in the pluck of a pair of silk panties. Sansa sucks a shocked breath through her teeth when Jon pulls her dress up and out from under her and there is nothing but cold metal beneath her.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he pants, and she laughs when he cups his hands beneath her to try and make a barrier of warmth for her.

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” she says, finding the buttons of his dress shirt in the dark, unbuttoning them deftly just to feel the hot soft skin of him, and when she does she scoots towards him, over eager and hungry now. “Oh, God, I missed you,” she moans when she pushes the shirt off his shoulders, feels the muscles of hard work and discipline as they flex to drag her nearly off her perch and against him.

“I’ve thought of this ever since, ever since,” he says, and he doesn’t need to finish, not when his mouth is better occupied here with hers, not when she has a thousand parched kisses waiting to be plumped up and picked like fruit with his tongue.

She has never experienced hunger like this before. In Vegas she had a taste of him before she even knew she was wasting away from lackluster love.  But now it lives in her fingertips and in the arch of her spine, on the tender skin of her throat and behind her knees, deep in that desperate, desperate point between her legs. It is  _everywhere,_  and everywhere begs to be touched. He does his best and it’s  _good_ , the way his hands find her, how they slide up her legs and between them like the brush of a feather against a spring of nerves. But as much as she’s whimpering for him now, as delicious this despair is with relief so close at hand, Sansa remembers with a sudden jolt that breaks the kiss mid-moan.

“Jon, wait, I don’t- I’m not- I don’t have a condom,” she whispers against his mouth, against his scruff when he sucks her lower lip between his, and now she’s regretting never getting on the pill despite regular visits to the clinic. “I mean, I do at my place, but not, um, not here, I don’t think,” she says with a wince. She feels like an idiot.  _Who keeps contraception in their parents’ laundry room?_

“We don’t need one right now,” he says, kissing her once more before the scruff of his chin and the warmth of his breath is gone, and there is a rustle in the dark and a sudden gust of cold air once he’s stepped out from between her thighs.

“Wait, what do y- _ohh,_ ” she says, gasping a sharp breath when she feels his mouth again, lower-lower-lower now where her panties are pushed to the side, mouth buried against her and lapping at the lick of flame he put there not so long ago.

“Sansa? Jon, where did you guys go?” someone says, two hallways away, and muffled as it is she can recognize Bran’s voice, and suddenly her thighs clench at the thought of being discovered in such scandal by her brother.

“Shhh,” Jon says, his hands two coaxing kneads on the tops of her thighs, turning her pliant. “Just try and stay quiet, no one will find us here,” and his words are midnight blooms she cannot see, deep husky things she can only feel with the way he speaks them against her sweat-damp skin.

 “Oh god, Jon, no,” Sansa says, hushed and terrified, mortified, tantalized. “No, you- I can’t,” Sansa whispers to the dark. “I  _can’t_ , they’ll, oh,” she says, lost now to every slide of his tongue, to the way he seems to lose  _himself_  in his attentions.

“Yes you can, sweetheart,” he says, hums with a flick, and despite the rise of panic in her she spreads her thighs more for him. “Yes, just like that,” he whispers, taking the words right out of her mouth, and she rolls her hips forward, arches her back until her head bumps the shelf above the laundry machines.

It’s there Sansa decides to hold on with one hand, the other a roaming search until she finds him, and she digs her fingers into his hair as she rides out the slip and dip of all of his hard work, her jaws clenched together as she breathes as quietly as she can. He’s got his hands inside her dress kneading her hips, he’s got his tongue inside and against her, and she thinks about candlelight and how it flickers, how it sputters and glows and twitches and flits.

But then there’s no thought at all because she’s on the brink of losing  _everything_  now, the control of shiver and the trembles in her legs, the high little whine in the back of her throat that she can barely swallow, the way she’s rocking herself against his mouth. She can feel him hum the way a cat purrs with cream, can feel the slow steady rub of his tongue as he licks her for one last good measure, and if that doesn’t make a girl shudder and come apart then nothing could.

“Just as delicious as I remembered you,” he says, dropping kisses to thighs that can’t stop shaking, and her eyes roll back in her head.

“And you’re as good as I’ve been dreaming,” she sighs. Her memories of that night in Vegas are far more scattered than his, and she’d been aching from the lack of much to cling to. But now,  _well_.

Jon is a lingering retreat and stand, and she keeps her hand in his hair as he adjusts her clothing for her, putting her more or less back to rights. “Now, maybe you’ll remember  _that_  next time your mother sets you up on another shitty date,” he says, kissing her wrist when she runs her fingers down to the nape of his neck and beneath his ear.

“I’ll never go on another one, not now, not that I know you’re, that we’re, you know,” she whispers against his mouth, wiped dry though she can still taste success and happiness on his tongue.  _Now that we’re together,_  she thinks, because she knows she doesn’t need to say it, not after being so branded.

“Good,” he says, and she feels him smile into the kiss, can picture it with her mind’s eye, that naughty look in his eye when he’s pleased with himself. “’Cause I  _really_  don’t like the idea of my wife dating other people.”

**May**

 

Jon is pulled from sleep bit by bit, but the bewitching snare of Sansa’s bed is tough competition with its soft, floral-spray sheets and vivid white goose down comforter. Her smell is everywhere here, even if he weren’t chest down on the mattress with his head and folded forearms shoved under her pillows to block out late spring sunshine filtering through gauzy blue curtains. Rain fresh breezes blow almost cold against the bare skin of his back, and he figures that’s the likely culprit of what finally makes his eyes open here in his makeshift little den of pillow. But then he hears beauty drift in to mix with sunshine and clean air, the mounting swell, the quickening tempo of notes, low to high and back again, the deep mournful that lifts to joy from the other room. Jon smiles as he drags the pillow from on top of his head, and he rolls onto his back, blinking like an owl up the ceiling as he listens.

After months of sleepovers he knows it’s one of Bach’s Cello Suites he’s listening to, she’s had to tell him so many times since they’re her favorite to warm up to. He has heard them up in Erie while showering before getting ready for work, while lacing up his sneakers to go jogging along the lake with Ghost while Sansa practices in his living room, has smiled and watched her hands move as if of their own accord while ordering takeout on his couch. But his favorite by far is listening to them here in her lair of light and lace, of wildflowers in vases and sidewalk watercolors hanging on every walls, like he’s wandered into some secret land of  _woman,_  complete with its own soundtrack made of amaretto and broiled sugar.

He moves slowly so the bed won’t creak and disturb her, though he knows her eyes will be closed and her head tipped against the fingerboard like it’s a long lost lover. Still he treads softly when he stands and adjusts his pair of jersey pajama pants before pulling a long sleeved t-shirt over his head. Jon doesn’t emerge from her room until he’s brushed his teeth and washed his face, and only then it’s just to make coffee, because he knows better than to interrupt her. Sansa’s eyes drift open and she looks up at him from the center of the front room when he opens a cupboard in her kitchen with a loud squeak, and he returns the smile she gives him. Her eyes drift shut once more as her fingers wiggle and slide, as she frowns every now and then in response to some miniscule error she’s made that he can’t hear.

“You want out, boy?” he says, low and groggy from sleep to the white husky sprawled out near Sansa’s socked feet, but Ghost simply stretches his neck to look back at Jon. “Love struck,” he says with a snort and a soft chuckle.

He’s had his coffee and eaten an apple and banana by the time he finally sits on the squashy beige sofa across from where she sits next to the TV cabinet, and as if she can sense him Sansa’s eyes open. The music slides and sighs to a slow stop, one final drag of her bow before she rights her head and smiles brightly at him, like she’s gone from one world to another with the seamless step of a seasoned traveler.

“Morning,” she says with a happy sigh, holding the cello with one hand as she stretches to the side to place her bow in her open case. “I hope I didn’t wake you. You got in so late last night, I wanted you to sleep. How’s the baby?”

“Baby Sam is doing great, about as wide eyed and sweet as his parents, though not nearly as tired, I’d wager,” Jon says. “They’re going to have a sip and see in a week or so, whatever the hell that is, and they want me to bring you.”

It was a relatively easy labor for Gilly, or so they said; to Jon it all sounds like an awful lot of pain and hard work no matter how quick or ‘easy’. He didn’t get out of the hospital in Erie until nearly midnight, drove straight to Pittsburgh as soon as he kissed the kid and said yes to being his godfather.

“I’d love to,” she says. “Babies are wonderful,” she says, sliding from her wooden chair to kneel beside her cello case and lay her own baby carefully in its bed. “Did you sleep okay?”

Jon tells her he did, that he always sleeps like a log here. And it’s true; he loves her place far more than his sad rental bachelor pad with ugly wallpaper he’s not allowed to take down, with a dishwasher that smells like fish from the one time Pyp got drunk and tried to cook a salmon in it. Sansa grins, pleased as punch every time he tells her so, and once she locks her case she crosses the room and crawls over him to straddle his lap, wearing his old Pirates sweatshirt and a pair of his boxers.

“Good. I love it when you’re in my bed. It feels like I get to have my cake and eat it too,” she says, and he scoots down against the arm rest when she leans over to kiss him.

“Well, what if I told you that you could have me in it a whole lot more,” he says, because it’s been on his mind for a few days  now but he wanted to wait until they were face to face before he mentioned it.

“Um, yes, please,” she says, lifting her head to look at him with bright blue eyes and a smile that tastes like honey chapstick. “But I don’t get it. How is that going to happen? I’m going to Bowdoin Music Festival next month, and your schedule is airtight; it  _never_  changes,” she says, trying on a pout for emphasis. “And with that promotion to Lieutenant coming up, you’re only going to get busier.”

“The promotion is just grapevine type stuff, I still don’t know if I’m going to get it,” Jon says, sticking his hand in the two-handed pocket in front of her sweatshirt. He gives it a light tug, lifts his eyes to hers, and her faux pout fades when she sees he’s being serious.

“But one thing I  _do_ know I can get is a job down here, because I’ve been offered one,” he says slowly. “Station 18, right by Carnegie,” he says of Sansa’s university, and here he waits, breath bated and heavy in his chest, because he’s been hunting for firefighter positions here for a few months now, and three days ago he got a damned good offer.

“You want to move here? To Pittsburgh?” she says, voice climbing higher and higher until it is the peep of a mouse. She tips her head to the side as she looks at him and the mess of hair piled on top of her head plops to the side, spilling out a loose lock that drifts down against her cheek. Jon tugs it, gently.

“I’m lonely up in Erie, Sansa.”

“Yeah?” she says, and there’s a flood of relief when he sees her smile, coy and small at first as she fiddles with the hem of his shirt that she’s pushed halfway up his ribs. “Are you missing me still, Jon?”

“Always,” he answers truthfully. “Whenever I’m not here, I’m missing you.”

“Would you, um, where would you live? Robb and Margie have a spare room, I guess, huh,” she murmurs, and now she’s barely containing that grin of hers, lit up with morning sunshine as it is, day glow happy and about as wicked as a kid who just stole candy from the jar.

“Margie is allergic to dogs and you know it, young lady,” he says with a frown about as genuine as her pout was a minute ago. “But I don’t want to live with them.”

“You want to live here,” she murmurs, and it isn’t a question but it’s soft and sweet like those sheets of hers, and his heart beats at the idea that they could be his sheets too, one of these days. “You want to live with me.”

Jon nods. “Look, I know nobody really knows about us yet, but I don’t want to be anywhere else. If it’s okay with you then yeah, I’d w—” but she cuts him off with a sucked in gasp and rush of words.

“Yes! Oh, yes, yes, Jon, please. Oh my god, yes, live with me,” she says, leaning down to pepper his face with kisses, so many that soon he’s laughing, his breeze-cool hands making her squeal when he slides them up under her sweatshirt to grip her by the waist. “Oh my god, yes,” she says after he shuts her up a moment with a kiss on the mouth. “Then you’ll really be all mine.”

“I’ve been yours since day one,” he says between the pluck and hum of two kisses, as on key as the notes she plays each morning. “I’ve been in love with you since day two, I think,” he admits without thinking, drunk as he is on spring and on Sansa, on the way  _Yes, yes, yes_ sounds when it comes from her, drunk as he is on the thought of living by her side instead of 130 miles away.

She draws back slowly, hand braced on the armrest beside his head as she looks down at him, wide eyed and unblinking.  _Oh shit, oh shit,_  he thinks, dropping his hands to her hips under her shirt. Jon swallows, closes his eyes briefly as he tries to think his way out of this one, but they open soon enough when Sansa lowers down and kisses him again.

“It’s about time you said it,” she whispers, and he almost sighs when she tells him she is in love with him, that she knew it for certain that night back in March when he hauled her up over his shoulder and carried her two blocks so she wouldn’t ruin her shoes during an early spring thunderstorm. He remembers it well and it makes him smile to think that  _that_  was when her heart really started beating for him.

“If I knew then that’s all it took I would have hauled you around like a sack of flour a long time ago,” he says, and despite her laughter she clears her throat and gives him a stern look.

“Making a woman wait this long, though, I mean really, Jon,” she says, low roll purr in the back of her throat when he slides his hands back to her waist, up further still until he feels the wings of her shoulder blades under his palms. “I’m leaving in a month for Maine. How could you?”

“I’ll do my best to make it up to you,” he says, angling his hips more towards the coffee table so he can, with a deep grunt, haul himself up into a sitting position with her in his lap and her legs on either side of him.

“I think that’s a smart idea. We’re going to be living together, after all, and I’d hate for it to start out with a grudge,” she says, and now that he’s up off his back she gathers his shirt in her hands and pulls it up and off of him.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart. You’re the smart one here,” he says, following her lead and freeing her from his old sweatshirt, and after he tosses it to the couch he stops to take her in like this.

She’s a riot of alabaster gooseflesh tipped with rose, buttermilk veined with peach, and apparently she is his, and he is hers. Jon sighs, hums, murmurs maybe, sweet words of nonsense as he inclines his head and kisses each breast, buries his face between them to kiss her there, too. Sansa is sinew covered in the soft of woman, the way she bends back for him, her hands two light tugs in his hair when she closes her fists at the back of his head, and the arch of her brings her wedding ring nearly into his mouth.  He lifts his head to gaze at it a moment before he carefully lifts the necklace up and over, removing it despite her murmur of protest.

“Gimme that back,” she says with an aroused, impatient whine to her voice that he’s come to know and love. She tries to grab it out of his hand but he holds it just out of reach, and he huffs a laugh when she nearly smothers him with her breast as she swipes out to snag the chain he’s holding above and behind his head.

“I want you to wear it the real way, Sansa,” he says, taking her left hand off his chest so he can slide it on her ring finger. “Just this once, now that I know you love me,” he says, and with the chain looped in it, it requires only a slight push before it’s over her knuckle, there where it was \ all those months ago.

He watches the lightness of her expression turn serious, watches as she stills to look down at her hand the way some women can’t help, fanning out their fingers to study the way a ring looks there, whether or not there’s a diamond to go with it. Jon tugs her hips closer to his as she gazes at the simple shine of the silver band, and only when she can feel how hard he is does she start and look up at him.

“Then you have to do it too,” Sansa says, “because you love me. Because it’s not the right way, is it, on that hand,” she says, pulling his hands from the small of her back where they so often love to wander.

“Okay,” he says, and they both look on as she moves the ring from the wrong hand to the left, to the  _real_  right hand when it comes to this sort of thing.

“I love you, Jon,” she says dreamily, half smiles and lidded eyes, the brightness of day hazing her out a bit, softening the edges of everything he sees.

“I love you too,” he says, squeezing his left hand into a fist to snare the feeling of the ring before he pulls her back into his arms and against his chest, and then Jon slides off the couch, two knees to the thick rug beneath them, and that’s when he lays her down.

It’s still a crisp spring day outside but it warms up quickly in here even without their clothes, with the slow, thick way they’ve decided to move against each other. Usually they go at it like animals the first morning he’s got a few days off lined up, hungry and antsy after a week or more apart. Now that this is going to become a reality, his living here, now that it’s just a two week notice away, they can take their time with each other.

“You feel so good,” she tells him once he pushes inside her. “God, Jon.”

He sucks in a breath, holds it until he’s pulled back and rocked forward once more, making sure he can hang on to this pace before he speaks. 

“Yes,” he says against her collarbone, moving now. “I want you to feel good, Sansa.”

He’s got the lilting swirling spell of Bach on repeat in his mind as she starts breathing in time with each slow drag and thrust. He’s got her knees against his ribs and the wet hot squeeze of her here where he ends and she begins. When Sansa lifts her arms to wrap around his shoulders, he feels the chain of her necklace against his back like fine fishing wire floating on water from where it is still attached to her ring. A kiss, a moan and then another one, half a dozen  _I love yous_  cast out like cello music, though this song is far sweeter to his ears, because for the first time to Jon it feels like they are married.

 

_Two months later_

She couldn’t get out of her parents picking her up at the airport, not after she slipped and wriggled free from the hook of parental pressure so Jon could drop her off last month, so she could have that romantic airport kiss goodbye instead of her mother scolding her about sunscreen even though she’s 21. It’s why Sansa is sitting in the backseat of her mother’s Volvo station wagon with her head resting on the window, her forefinger in her wedding ring as she runs it up and down the length of her necklace. For six weeks she has been so completely immersed in music save for texts, phone calls and Skype sessions with Jon, and to sit in a car listening to NPR and her parents occasionally discuss traffic here on the 376 is a sort of shock to her core.

Boredom and impatience and want make her look at her phone again, and she beams when she sees a  _Where are you???_  waiting for her. She swipes the screen with her thumb and types a clumsy reply one handed as her foot starts tap-tap-tapping, she is that eager to get home already.

**Sansa:** 30 minutes away thanks to traffic. I can’t wait to see you.

**Jon:** Same. I’m driving the dog nuts bc I can’t stop pacing. What are you wearing

**Sansa:** Blue sundress with white flowers on it. Sandals. Oh! NO BRA.

Sansa smiles at her phone, her fingertip still hooked in her ring, and then he sends her a text so dirty it makes her laugh before she can help herself. She wrinkles her nose and tries to think of something truly raunchy to tell him, but instead of thinking up words all she can think up is the action itself, and suddenly she’s fanning herself, beet red and grinning and remembering sex on the counter.

“Talking with a boy?” her mother asks, and Sansa jumps in her seatbelt she’s taken so off guard, looking up and around until she sees her mother looking at her in the vanity mirror of the front passenger seat. Cat glances over her shoulder with a bright smile when Sansa is too dumbstruck to reply, when she repeatedly hits the home button to get the filthy sext off her screen. “I was hoping you’d meet someone up in Maine. Does he play cello too, or maybe another strings instrument?”

“I um,” Sansa says, rapid-fire thinking up some other reason she’s blushing at her phone, but after over nine months of lying and feigned nonchalance she simply gives up. “Yeah, it’s a boy,” she says, thinking that Jon Snow is no  _boy._ “I met someone, but not in Maine. He’s not into music, but he seems to like it when _I_  play,” she says, looking away from her mother’s eager expression as she flushes bright happy pink all over again.

“Of course he does,” her father says, his no nonsense voice tinged on the edges with fatherly pride. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Thanks dad,” she says with a small eye roll, a smile and another glance out the window because as much as she loves pleasing her mother and father, it’s different now with Jon in her life. Another source of delight and pride and pleasure, one that is fully mature and adult, fully separated from her parents; something that is hers as a woman no matter how long she crushed on him before.

She  _loves_  catching him watching her as she practices. In the month they lived together before she left for her study he even started whistling classical while cooking or doping off on the internet. It’s been heaven living with him, though it’s been hell living apart for just as long and so soon. The only consolation in Maine was getting to brag to people she’ll never see again that her boyfriend is a firefighter and that yes, it’s just as hot as it sounds.  _Shirtless pushups in the living room, I mean come on,_  she thinks with an impatient squirm.

“Well, where did you meet him?” her mom asks after several minutes when they’ve gotten back up to a decent speed again. “ _Not_  Bowdoin, I suppose?”

“Does he live in Maine? Is this some long distance thing?” her dad asks, pride replaced with the tone of voice that can only mean he’s on the brink of a life lesson lecture.

“No, it’s not long distance. I mean, it was in the beginning, but not anymore. He lives in Pittsburgh now, has for like two months or so,” she says.

Her heart starts to race a little because they know Jon moved to town, though they think he lives on his own in some crummy studio downtown. But it feels good now, sharing however much she dares, and she channels her excited energy into thinking up cryptic answers. She chats as lightly and elusively as she can, saying things like  _He’s very athletic and disciplined,_ things like  _He treats me so well,_ but these things just distract her. She sees him the day before she left for Bowdoin up in Maine, bright eyed and slicked with fresh sweat after his early morning run with Ghost, how he showered with her and squeezed shampoo suds from her hair, how he could barely lift his gaze to hers when they called her flight and she had absolutely no time left to linger with him in the airport. Suddenly tears spring to her eyes, and even though they’re only a few blocks away from Southside Flats, she wonders when this stupid ride will end.

“Well if he’s so wonderful, were you planning on ever introducing him to us?” her mom asks.

Sansa has to hand it to her, how well she’s corralling the busybody to just the edge of her tone. After all, she’s been trying to set her oldest daughter up for years, ever since Arya was discovered making out with a mechanic’s assistant her junior year of high school. Finally she sees her apartment building at the end of the block, is already unclicking her seatbelt to shrug her purse strap across her body.

“I don’t really have to, considering you guys already know him,” she says after her father parks by the curb, and she practically leaps out onto the sidewalk, hustling to the back hatch to get her luggage. She briefly closes her eyes behind her sunglasses when she hears both car doors open and slam shut.  _Shit, I should_ not  _have said that._

“We  _know_  him? What does that even mean?” her mother asks.

“I know this young man and he hasn’t had the decency to introduce himself to me as your boyfriend?” her father demands, and that makes her wince and falter a moment, worried now that she’s set Jon up for automatic failure. But love and defense go hand in hand, and she comes back swinging.

“Hey, we just wanted to see how things played out before we got  _you_ guys involved in our relationship,” Sansa says, not a little hotly as she drags her bag and cello case out of the back of the car. “No, seriously, dad, I got it,” she says when he tries to help her. “I dragged them all the way up to Maine, I can drag them up a flight of stairs, okay?”

“Sansa, come on, you just got home, you’re telling us you’re dating someone and now you’re kicking us out before we even get inside your apartment?” Her father looks hurt, a wounded 50 year old puppy with silver in his hair and a frown on his face. Sansa glances up at her apartment window in case Jon is there looking down, and when she sees he isn’t she sighs and smiles;  _Five more seconds won’t kill me_. She lets go of her luggage and flings her arms around her father’s neck.

“I love you, dad. I love you both, but after a month and a half living with a bunch of strangers, I just really want a hot bath and to go to bed early with a good book,” she says, wondering if she’ll tell Jon his new nickname is Book. Sansa kisses her father’s cheek and draws away from him. “Can we maybe just take a raincheck for the next big reunion?”

Her father is a thoughtful, considerate man, maybe even more so than Jon, and it doesn’t take him long to come to a conclusion, to shrug and nod before he smiles at her with wrinkled eyes and a five o’clock shadow that never seems to change. Sansa smiles back before she turns to her mother and hugs her too.

“Tell you what,” she says after she kisses her mother’s cheek, soft and scented from years of daily Yves St Laurent. “I’ll bring him home for Thanksgiving, okay?”

“But that’s  _months_  away! Sweet pea, come on, who  _is_  this man?” Cat says as she follows Sansa and Ned to the stairwell doorway, her parents each holding a piece of luggage as she unlocks the door. “Is it Harry, from last year? I bet it’s Harry,” her mother says smugly with a shoulder nudge to her father.

“Sort of,” Sansa says as she props open the door with a foot to turn and grapple first her wheeled suitcase and then her cello. After all, Jon’s jealousy over  _that_  disaster more than resuscitated what happened in Vegas. “Sort of, but way better. Listen, I love you guys, and I’ll call you tomorrow, I swear. Oh, and thanks for the ride!” she says as cheerily and hastily as she can before she drags her bags inside and lets the door lock shut behind her.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she says with emphasis, because what the hell was she thinking?  _I wasn’t thinking, I was just too excited to be alone with him._

“Oh yeah?” Jon calls from above, and she grins when she looks up to see him hanging over the railing of the first floor landing. Her heart soars at the sight of him.

“Not  _that_  kind of fuck, buster,” she laughs.

“Damn. Is the coast clear?”

“Yep,” she says with a happy sigh, head tilted back to watch him grin and disappear from the banister’s edge. “Come rescue me, big boy,” she says, and now she can hear the quick efficient pound of his feet as he takes the stairs by two to get to her.

It’s like being swept up in a wave of Jon, starting with the impact of his hug, the sweep up in his arms and the tight, hard way he pins her to the wall, as if he is afraid she’ll up and fly to Maine again. And then the trip upstairs, the strip down and the love, the  _God don’t ever leave for that long again_  and the  _I couldn’t sleep the entire first week I was up there, I missed you so much._ Then a long stretch of time they spend spent in bed, silent and drowsing, eyes half closed with his fingers drifting down her spine as the sweat cools. A nice steady wave of Jon, warm and cool, strong and soft like well-worn linen, silence edged with smiles, a brave man who hums Bach when he thinks no one is listening. It makes her muse and then it makes her chuckle.

“What’s up, sweetheart,” he says, voice low and thick and satisfied, his fingers riding up the length of her back to tangle up in her hair as she listens to the steady hello of his heartbeat with her head on his chest.  _Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

“I was just thinking how my parents would kill me if they knew I was living with a guy without ever having met him,” she says, turning her head to plant a full mouthed kiss on his sternum. “It kind of makes you like, you know, like a bad boy, sort of,” she says.

Jon laughs, full chested, full bellied, an out and out  _laugh_  that makes Ghost get up and walk into the bedroom to lie down at the foot of the bed, he is that concerned over such an out of character outburst.

“Bad boy, huh? Hate to break it to you, San, but they  _do_ know me and I’m pretty sure they know I’m no bad boy.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know you as my boyfriend,” she says, lifting her lead to look at him. His dark hair has grown out since she left, and though he’s taken care of himself in all other ways, his goatee has scruffed out too; she has the exfoliated chin and thighs to prove it. “Not as my husband,” she says around her heart that’s in her mouth, watching the way that word washes over him, watching to see what it inspires, hoping it’s good things because as much as music has been feeding her lately, the loss of him has been a crippling deprivation.

To her joy, it makes him smile.

“No,” he says quietly. “Not as those things, they don’t.”

“But,” she says, “I sort of told them they’d meet you. Well, I told them they  _know_  you, but I didn’t tell them it was you. I said they’d meet you this Thanksgiving,” she says, and the deepening dusk seeping through the curtains fuzzes out the nuance of his expression, and he is motionless on his back with her draped over him. “Jon? Jon, is that okay? I hope you’re not mad.”

“No,” he says after a moment. “Not mad at all. I love your family, Sansa. I kind of think of it as my own; I have for longer than I can remember,” he says, and when his smile comes back she rests her head back to his chest.

“Good.”

“Are you going to introduce me as your boyfriend then, Sansa? Or your husband?” he says, and it makes a breath catch and stall in the back of her throat.

Because it’s something that’s been on her mind, woven into and between each note she’s played the past six weeks, something that’s been channeled into every piece she’s played, even the audition for the Nashville Symphony three days before she left Bowdoin. It’s something she realized in the car on the way here, and it’s something she hopes he feels too. Sansa lifts her head again, turning onto her belly so her chin rests on a bed of firm pectoral, so she can see him here in the fading light. Her giddy heart says  _thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump._

“I don’t think we can separate the two anymore. Do you?”  

 

**November**

“Are you sure you don’t want me to carry you? It’s really coming down,” he says, leaning over the steering wheel to gaze up at the cloud choked sky. He’s not lying, it  _is_  coming down in one of those cats and dogs storms, but he’s not really worried about her footwear, either. “We could wait to see if it lightens up in a few minutes.”

They’re parked in the street two houses down from her parents’ on a grey Thanksgiving afternoon, the wheat colored lawns as flat a color as the sky above and the naked boughs of maple and oak trees lining the sidewalk. It’s the same as it’s been all week but on  _today_  of all days, it feels like an ill omen. He’d prefer sunshine and blue skies, but he supposes Cat and Ned Stark handing his ass to him is better suited to this shitty weather.

“I’ve got proper shoes on this time, you don’t have to carry me,” Sansa says with a chuckle as she makes tiny adjustments to her makeup in the vanity mirror. “I just think you’re stalling.”

“So what if I am,” Jon mutters, the rain drumming the roof of the car in doleful rhythm with the jangle of his nerves.

“Hey, listen to me,” she says, twisting in her seat to look at him, and he obeys, turning to mirror her with his knee pressed against the center console. She’s the only pretty pop of color on this ugly Thursday, her red hair brilliant in its sweep over her shoulder against the deep amethyst of her deep v-neck sweater. The ring on her necklace is just out of sight, and Jon dips a finger between her breasts to drag it out. He does this so often now she doesn't even try to bat his hand away anymore, because it's nothing sexual. It's rubbing a lucky coin before tossing the dice, it's pulling out a winning lottery ticket just to make sure it's real.

“Hmm?” he says, gazing at the silver that gleams without sunshine, even though it’s probably a cheap piece of junk.  _It’s our junk though._

“Jon, my whole family loves you. Yes,  _yes,_  even my mother. She’s got five kids, okay, you probably just blend right in, that’s probably why she doesn’t take much notice of you, that’s all,” Sansa says. “And hey, I love you too. I love you the  _most,_  actually, and that’s all that counts. I don’t care what they say, nothing is going to change how I feel or the way we live our lives. Okay?”

She is so optimistic, a greenhouse flower in a world of soot, so bright with her words that he cannot help but shake his head and snort a laugh. She’s never been a guy meeting a girl’s parents before, though, and she’s clearly clueless on the whole wolf in sheep’s clothing lecture he’ll probably get for inserting himself into a family only to get hammered and sleep with their oldest daughter on vacation.  _But sir,_ he thinks with a smile as he tucks her ring carefully back inside her sweater.  _But sir, I married her, and it wasn’t even a shotgun wedding._

“Okay, sweetheart. Let’s just go get this over with,” he says, leaning over the console with a hand at the back of her neck to kiss her.

“That’s the holiday spirit,” Sansa says dryly with a roll of her eyes.

“I have a feeling  _I’m_ going to be the holiday spirit in a few minutes,” he mutters as he twists to reach for the umbrella in the backseat.

“Oh, very funny, Jon. Should I call you Mr. Marley?” she says as he cracks opens the driver’s side door to push the umbrella out before he stands. Jon jogs around the car to open her door for her, and she unfolds herself to stand kissing close to him under the umbrella.

“That’s assuming I make it to Christmas without your parents killing me,” he says as he wraps his arm around her shoulders, and together they walk briskly down the sidewalk towards her parents’ house.

“Remember, you can immediately launch into how in just a few months you’re already up for Driver Engineer again,” she says of his latest nod towards promotion, even though it’s the step he was already at up in Erie before demoting himself back to Firefighter in order to move here. “And now that we’re living together you've paid off your credit card.”

“You’ve been making a list of ways to boost me up, huh,” he chuckles. “You going to tell them I always put the toilet seat down, too?”

“Well, I’m not going to  _lie_  to them,” she says archly, tucking a chilly hand in one of the rear pockets of his jeans.

“Are they watching us, do you think?” he asks when they’re jogging up the walkway stairs towards the Stark house, the Christmas wreath replaced with a cornucopia hanging just below the knocker.

“No, I can’t see anyone,” she says with a squint-eyed glance through the rain up at her house. “But that doesn’t mean you get to back out,” she says hastily, glancing at him as they finally make it under the protective cover of the front porch. Jon takes his arm from around her and shakes out the umbrella before closing it and setting it upright in the corner. He shoves his hands in his pockets as if there are handfuls of courage in them.

“Of course not,” he says quietly as she clacks the knocker three times, and Jon stands there stony faced and rooted to the spot, and he can feel his heartbeat throb in his clenching fists as he waits for the ax to fall. “Shit, shit, shit,” he whispers when Cat’s face glances out the side window with a frown before she opens the door.

“Happy Thanksgiving, you two! Did you guys get here at the same time? Sansa, where is your beau? Don’t tell me he canceled on you,” she says.

“Hey, mom,” Sansa says, glancing at Jon with an encouraging smile, the smile kindergarten teachers give their students when they’re trying to spell  _Dog_  for the first time. “My  _beau_  didn’t cancel, he’s righ—”

“He’s on his way, Mrs. Stark, I just ran into Sansa on the sidewalk,” Jon says quickly, bowing his head when Cat steps aside to let them inside, and he ignores Sansa’s burning glare that he can feel on the back of his head.

“Oh thank goodness, Ned and I have been so excited to meet him. Here, just kick your shoes off on the tile, the carpet will be a wreck otherwise,” she says, and they both do as they’re told, Jon’s head bowed like a scolded dog. “How you’ve been able to hide a boyfriend from the entire family, Sansa, I’ll never know. I thought Arya was more the type for keeping secrets, but I guess your children never stop surprising you,” Cat says cheerfully as she leads them through the empty living room towards the crowded den at the back of the house.

It’s the same as he remembers it from the first time he came over to play after school in 4th grade, or at least the updates to it have been so subtle he can’t tell. He knows Cat’s had to replace the carpet at least twice thanks to five children and the ragtag team of friends they always drag home, but the bookshelves still go up to the ceiling with titles so familiar to him he could probably recite half of them with his eyes closed. He’s always felt comfortable here in this house but now with a ring on his finger and lie under his belt he feels about as restless as a whore in church.

“Hey now, I’m an open book,” Arya says from her tailor style seat on the floor in front of the TV next to where Rickon is sprawled on his stomach playing Fallout on mute. She doesn’t bother looking up from the rapid fire texts she’s probably sending to Gendry.

“Yeah, I can’t  _wait_  to meet this guy. Come on, Ric, hurry up and save your stupid game, the Steelers are playing right now,” Robb says from his sprawl on the sofa, an IPA in the hand he has resting on the back of the couch. Jon shoots him a murderous look, to which Robb simply shrugs as he pulls out his phone.

“I’m sure he’s got to be  _soooo_  sweet, in order to steal Sansa’s heart away,” Margie says as she sips a glass of white wine next to Sansa’s older brother, and Jon rolls his eyes as his phone chimes with a text.

**Robb:** pussy

Jon sighs.

“I can’t  _believe_ you, we were supposed to be in this  _together_ ,” Sansa hisses as she walks backwards, following her mother into the kitchen. “Hey, Jon, can I bring you anything to drink?” she says with a slathered on sickly sweet voice, and it clashes terrifically with the look of pure venom she’s giving him.  _We’re not_ really _in it together,_  he wants to say, wondering if she’d even look at her phone if he sent her a text.  _It’s going to be me alone on the chopping block._

“A beer would be great.”

“Water it is,” she snaps, making a face at him.

 “What’s the matter with  _you_?” Bran says to her as he wanders into the room, phone in his hand as he texts without looking up.

“Nothing,” Sansa sighs. “I’m just upset that my  _boyfriend_  isn’t here yet,” she says, and that last lingering look she gives Jon before turning to walk into the kitchen is enough to wrench his heart in two.

“Boyfriend? Whose boyfriend? Is Gendry coming over? Did you tell your mother, Arya, because she’ll have kittens if you mess with her seating arrangement,” Ned says with tired resignation as he emerges from the kitchen with a couple of beers.

“No, he isn’t,” Arya scowls from the floor. “But I told him he could come afterwards.”

“Same here with Jojen,” Bran says, still standing in the center of the room on his phone with a drifting half-smile on his face.

“Well then  _I_ wanna invite—” Rickon starts, but Ned cuts him off smoothly.

 “Jon, there you are,” he says with an easy smile and the offer of one of his beers. “Good to see you, son.”

“Thanks, you too, Ned,” Jon says, wondering if he should call him sir or Mr. Stark, now that everything’s changed.

“You walk in with Sansa and that guy she’s been dating? I want to see who this guy is; apparently I’ve already met him.” Ned says, slipping a hand in his pocket as he drinks his beer and looks around the room for this mystery man, too used to stray kids blending in with the crowd of his own.

Jon slides a glance to where Robb is staring at him with raised eyebrows. His oldest friend knows him well, too well; he knows the massive amount of respect Jon has for Eddard, knows that standing here lying to him is about as miserable a situation as he could get into. The slap of reprimand Sansa’s glare gave him, the knot in his chest begging to be undone by the simple straight forward truth, and Mr. Stark standing here with an open, guileless expression are all too much.

“Yeah, about that,” Jon mutters, drinking a long, long swallow of chilled beer before he clears his throat. His gaze lifts when Sansa comes back with a glass of wine in hand, and she’s gemstone pretty with her dark plum sweater and garnet hair, eyes wide and fastened on him like he’s going to turn tail and run.  _I very nearly did._

“Jon,” Sansa says softly, a smile on the corner of her mouth. “Yeah?” He nods.

“Yeah. So, about this guy,” Jon says, inhaling deeply as he looks back at Ned who is looking back with interest until his eldest child interrupts.

“Hey, holy shit!” Robb says, moving his arm from around Margie to sit up and point at Sansa and then Jon. “Next week is Sansa’s birthday.”

“Give the man an award,” Rickon mutters, and in one swift movement Robb grabs the remote and switches the TV source back to cable, and then the sounds of football fill the room. “Hey!”

“No, that’s not what I meant, smartass, what I  _meant_  is it’s also their one year anniversary,” Robb says with a bright eyed, innocent-blink smile, and half of Jon wants to pummel the shit out of him. The other wants to thank him for the extra kick of gumption.

“Whose one year anniversary?” Cat says, untying an apron from around her waist as she sips her own glass of red, oblivious to the soft, honeyed look Sansa is giving him as she crosses the room and slips her hand in his.

“Ours,” they say in unison, smiling at each other before looking around the den, and Jon feels a bright flare of relief when he watched Ned’s eyes widen with surprise for a split second before he drops his head to hide a grin.

“Damn, Sansa, get it,” Arya says, and Jon flicks his gaze to where she’s hunched over her folded legs, looking up at them with interest. She catches Jon’s eye, grins and winks.  _Nice,_  she mouths, and he chokes on a laugh that he hides behind his fist as he feigns coughing.

“ _You’re_ the boyfriend?” Cat says with a look of dumbfounded incredulity that ping pongs between the two of them, her apron a ball in her hand as she plants her fist on her hip. “You two have been dating since August and neither of you told  _any_ of us?”

“Well, um, no, not exactly,” Sansa says, gazing down as she combs her hair with the fingers of her free hand. “I mean, Sam and Gilly have known up in Erie, and of course Robb and Margie have known, and yeah we’ve been dating since August, but also since before th—”

“Oh, Robb and Margaery have been keeping secrets from me too, hmm?” Cat says, taking another sip of wine as she rounds on the two of them, who are sitting there with looks of surprise on their face.

“Hey now, _we’re_ not the ones sneaking around, mom,” Robb says, lifting a hand in surrender.

Safe behind Cat’s back, Jon glances over at Sansa, who is looking at him with wide eyes, eyebrows raised, and a sort of terrified look of thrill on her face. Jon laces his fingers with hers and takes out his phone, his wedding band a flash as he texts Robb one handed.

**Jon:** Who’s the pussy now

“Oh, very funny,” Robb mutters, dropping his phone in his lap. He drains his beer as Margie peers over to read the text, and she does a poor job of stifling a giggle. “But you know, as a matter of fact, mom, dad, Margie and I  _have_ known about it. Since the very beginning in Vegas. Isn’t that right, babe?”

“You two have been dating since Vegas?” Ned asks, standing in the middle of the rest of his children, who are all in various poses in the den but all with matching looks of rapt enjoyment at this development.

“Oh no, they didn’t start dating in Vegas,” Margie says, draining the last of her white wine before flashing a brilliant smile to Robb.  _Son of bitch,_ Jon thinks.  _Don’t do it, you—_

“They got  _married_  In Vegas,” Robb says with a triumphant grin sent Jon’s way, and Jon pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.

Cat sucks in a gasp and drops her glass, red wine spraying the carpet and the left side of Rickon’s entire body, and as Jon and Sansa stare at each other with widened eyes, Arya bursts out laughing.

 

_ Thirty seconds later _

 

Sansa has seen the special effects trick in movies where panes and panes of glass all shatter, the shards hovering and freezing midair for a moment of silence before the noise comes back on, the pieces fall to the ground and all hell breaks loose. Now she knows what that sort of thing feels like. Suddenly there is all matter of commotion: the sitting up of her 13 year old brother as he stares down at his wine spattered arm; the back and forth pepper of questions from Arya and Bran, and the boom of her father’s voice as he asks her if this is really true. Sansa nods, is about to speak when her mother finally snaps out of the sightless trance she’s in, staring mute at the floor.

“Dammit, Ned, the carpet,” Cat cries, immediately dropping the wadded up apron in her hand and pressing her stocking foot on top of it to soak up some of the spill. “Rickon, go get the Resolve and some rags. Bran, go get me a bowl of water.”

“ _I_ didn’t do anything, why do  _I_  have to clean it? If anything,  _you_  should clean  _me_ , considering I look like a drive by victim,” he says, wiping the wine off his face with his hand and licking his fingers. “Nice vintage you got there, mom,” he says.

“Rickon,  _now,_ ” she shouts, and Sansa’s littlest brother is up on his feet and out of the room so fast he blurs.

“Come on, mom, let me help,” Sansa says, dropping to her knees and using her hands to soak the rags and press them down over the streaks and splashes of red. “Some holiday, huh,” she murmurs when Jon immediately sinks into a squat beside her. He pushes the sleeves of his sweater to his elbows and finds a more or less dry corner of the apron to dab at the wine.

“At least I haven’t been dragged out to the street,” Jon whispers, but then they jump when her mother has another shrill outburst.

“I don’t even- I mean, what- what were you  _thinking,_ ” Cat says with exasperation as she paces back and forth.

“I think the question you’re looking for is what were they  _drinking,_ ” Arya says, and everyone in the room save her parents burst into laughter. Even Jon snorts, closing his eyes and turning away from them as he masters himself.

“There’s enough mess for everyone, Arya, so put down the damned phone and help your brothers and sister. And brother in law, too, I suppose,” she says with a sigh of exasperation. “I’m- no, you know what, to hell with the rug. I want everyone in the dining room, pronto. I want clarity, and I want it  _now._ ”

Sansa has never been grounded a day in her life and has only sat at the table in Emergency Family Meeting mode for the whole Gendry debacle three years ago when she still lived at home, but now she feels bad for 16 year old Arya back then, because even with Jon holding her hand beside her, sitting in the hot seat seriously sucks. It’s a gorgeous room, wood floors with a Persian rug and a few plants in the corners, soft lighting above and candles set out down the length of the table. The table itself is sumptuously set with antique crystal stemware and the good china from grandma Tully, all delicacy and finery, but to Sansa right now it feels more like an interrogation room. Instead of a chandelier above them it might as well be a single swaying lightbulb.

Her mother and father are talking animatedly in the kitchen, voices low urgent buzzes back and forth punctuated with the occasional sharp word from her mother. It makes her feel like she’s done something wrong even though all she’s done is fall in love. _Well, get married while nearly blackout drunk. Then fall in love. Then move in with him. No big deal._

Her siblings all find it hilarious, the whole spread of them who, for once, have all left their phones in the den so they can give her and Jon their undivided attention, at least between Rickon’s attempts to suck wine out of his shirt and the occasional whisper between Robb and Margie, the latter blushing and ducking her head as Robb kisses her forehead.

“That was a low blow, Stark,” Jon says when Robb laughs and slings his arm around Margie, and when Sansa looks at him with a frown she can see his jaw muscles working, a telltale sign that Jon is upset.

“Hey, man, you called me a pussy,” Robb retorts, and now even Bran is giggling like an idiot with Rickon beside him, his shirtsleeve in his mouth.

“ _You_ called _me_ a pussy _first,_ ” Jon snaps, hunching over the table to aim a finger at his best friend, though he clears his throat and sits back with a huff when Sansa lays a hand on his forearm.

“Why did you call him a pussy?” Arya asks.

“Could everyone _please_ stop saying ‘pussy’?” their father says with a weary sigh as he and their mom walk into the room, each with refreshed beverages though, Sansa notes, her mother has switched from red wine to white.

“Now,” Cat says with over-deliberate low, sweet calm, her eyes closed as she takes her seat at one end of the long cherry wood table. She sets her glass down, her fingers still pressed firmly around its base as if she’s afraid it will tip over, or perhaps that she will fling it across the room.

“I want to hear everything, start to finish. Do not leave anything out. Do not lie, do not evade the truth. Yes, Sansa,” she says, opening her vivid eyes to settle them on her eldest daughter, who admittedly has her mouth open and finger raised, ready to rebut and defend. “Yes, I know it is _your_ relationship, but you have brought another member to the family with this decision, and I think we deserve to know the details.”

“Your mother’s right, sweet pea, just uh, just start from the top, as they say,” Ned says from the other end of the table, his eyes on Jon as he takes a long swallow of what looks like bourbon or dark rum.

Sansa frets a moment, worried there’s a challenge there, but then her father winks at Jon over the rim of his glass, unsmiling, yes, but slow and deliberate. Sansa beams a happy smile at him.

Catelyn sighs.

“Okay, so,” Sansa says hastily with a glance to her mouther. She sits up straight in her chair and she tells them everything, and though she’s prepared to go it alone out of respect for the tenuous position Jon is in, the moment she admits her longtime crush on him, he rests his hand on top of hers. “Thanks,” she says with a smile.

It takes over an hour, and by this time they are weaving the story like a needle and thread passes from hand to hand through the cloth, Jon picking up the story in some places – specifically those she can’t quite recall – and Sansa taking over when something comes up that is important to her. Margaery and her father are smiling serenely as she and Jon explain themselves, and even Arya has a smile on her face that is more excitement than devilry. Robb knows all of it and so he simply sits down with a grin and his arms folded across his chest. It’s not until Sansa gets to the real heavy stuff that she risks a lingering look at her mother, who is sitting with her hands pressed to her mouth and fat tears balanced on her meticulously lined lower lashes.

“So, yeah, um, we’ve been living together in my apartment since May. And we’ve been _so_ happy there, mom, honest. It’s um, it’s been like a dream,” Sansa says with a smile as she turns to look at Jon. He’s running the thumb of his free hand against the edge of the table, nodding in agreement at everything she says, but he looks up now to smile at her.

“It has, yeah.”

“And we will continue living there until next spring, when we plan on moving. Um, oh God,” Sansa says, closing her eyes and pressing her empty hand to her forehead.

“Hey, sweetheart, you can do this, okay? You’ve got this. You earned this,” Jon says, braving the reaction of their audience to kiss her temple. “And I’m right here with you.”

“Jesus, that’s so weird looking. Isn’t it weird looking?” Bran stage whispers to Arya.

“Maybe if it was two boys?”

“ _Arya_ ,” Ned and Cat both snap together, though her mother does so between discreet sniffles against the cuff of her cardigan.

“Where are you moving to, sweet- I mean, why are you guys moving, Sansa?” her father asks, and she smiles, thinking Jon’s pet name for her must feel too close to the one he’s called her since she was in diapers.

“Tennessee. I auditioned for the Nashville Symphony up in Maine, and last week I got my letter of acceptance. And, Jon and I talked it over, and um, we’re going to go,” she says, glancing around the table, and at the look of shock on everyone’s faces, Sansa sincerely hopes heart attacks don’t run in the family.

“And- and- you don’t- you don’t talk to the rest of your family about it, you just- you talk to- and I suppose you encouraged this move, hmm?” her mom says through the up and up hitching of her voice, gesturing towards Jon with a flick of her wrist.

Sansa bites her lip, glancing to her mother to her right and Jon to her left, worried now because this sort of confrontation is exactly what he was worried about. She lifts her hand to her heart and presses it there after Jon squeezes it and lets go, but where she thinks he’s going to stand and start yelling, he simply places his arm around her shoulder, drawing her closer to him. Sansa’s heart melts into a cotton candy puddle.

“Yes, I did. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for her, and I’ll be damned if I stand in her way.”

“I _told_ you he was supportive, mom,” Sansa says. “This is the kind of amazing—” but whatever is so amazing about her relationship with Jon, Catelyn won’t hear it, because she bursts into tears.

“Here we go,” Rickon says after Margie excuses herself with a murmur, earning himself an _Enough, young man_ out of their father.

“Cat, honey, what’s wrong? It _is_ an amazing experience for her, something she’s been working towards for years.”

“No, no, it’s not that, it’s just, oh God, Sansa,” Cat says, nodding her thanks when Margie comes back with a bottle of wine and a box of Kleenex. She dabs her eyes before blowing her nose demurely, balling the used tissue up in her hand before she plucks another from the box.

“Sansa, baby girl, you’re married, you’ve started your career, you moved in with a man, and a dog, apparently. But I missed it all,” Cat says with a watery hiccup and sigh, with a fresh wave of tears that make her put together face crumple all over again. “Your my oldest girl, and the only one who will ever get married, or at the very least let me be a part of the wedding, and it’s already over and done with. There was no dress shopping,” she sobs with a shake of her head, her shoulder length hair bobbing against her face, and now Sansa has tears in her eyes too. “No cake, no invitations, no flowers. I didn’t help you pack up and move in together, I didn’t even get to hear about your first date.”

“I think it was at a wedding chapel,” Bran whispers, and to Sansa’s infinite relief, Cat finally laughs with the rest of them, though it’s still stained with the salt of tears.

“Well, it’s true that I would have liked to throw you a bachelorette party,” Margie says, pouring wine in her glass and sliding it across the table to Sansa, who takes it with a grateful, if not slightly shaking hand.

“At least I get to welcome you to the family now, son,” Ned says, voice unusually gruff as he nods to Jon, who after an hour and a half of occasionally mortifying personal details exposed, finally turns a beet red color that make Robb laugh and slow clap from his seat by their dad. “But it’s true, Sansa, I never got to walk you down the aisle.”

“I’m sorry, daddy. It’s not like we planned it this way, but I can’t say I regret it. Not now,” she says with a smile to Jon as she wipes her damp eyes with the backs of her hands.

“Here, give me that,” he says as he takes her glass from her, draining half of it in one swallow.

“Looks like Margie’s got some competition, huh, babycakes?” Robb says, yelping when she drives her elbow into his ribs.

“Sansa, give me your necklace,” Jon says, clearing his throat as he pushes his chair back away from the table, and _now_ her hands shake, leaves on a tree in the center of a storm.

“Are you serious?”

“Do I look serious to you?” he says, and she grins helplessly as she looks up at him.

He always looks serious, Jon with the plain t-shirts and the merciless workout plans, Jon with a mouth shaped like a downturned bow, Jon with his grey eyes that are always watching and studying and learning. Jon with his love, with his secret smiles and his warm hands and a heart that knows her top to bottom, inside and out. Jon Snow, who is standing with a grin on his face and his hand outstretched.

“Yes, you do,” she says, and she lifts the necklace from under her sweater and over her head, letting the chain drag deliciously against the hair on the back of her neck until it’s free of her. Sansa drops it in his waiting palm, but before she can slip away he closes his fingers around hers and pulls her to her feet.

“Let’s see, here,” he mutters to himself as his thick fingers and short nails fumble with the clasp. “Now, the last time this happened, it was someone else’s idea entirely. Ah, there we go,” he says, carefully dropping the chain in a pool of itself by her wine glass. “But,” he says, lifting his eyes to hers as he drops down to one knee. “I have to admit I’ve given this some thought.”

“Oh, my god,” she whispers.

“I think I’m going to cry,” Margie whispers, and Cat sobs out a laugh because she’s already there.

“Sansa Stark, birthday girl, love of my life. Sansa Stark, my pretty little wife, will you do you me the honor of marrying me, stone cold sober and in front of all our friends and family? Will you have me again? Now and forever?”

“Yes, Jon,” she says with a laugh, tears on her cheeks as he grins and pushes her ring where it belongs, here on the ring finger of her left hand, the same place he put it almost a year ago. “Yes, I’ll marry you,” she says, eyes squeezing shut when her sister whoops and Jon leaps to his feet and pulls her up and into his arms.

“Music to my ears,” he whispers against her mouth before he kisses her, and Sansa thinks she couldn’t agree more.


End file.
